


nervous, sure-footed, furious

by khlassique



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, Super duper post-hbo s7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:13:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21712798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khlassique/pseuds/khlassique
Summary: "He did not say she had married a man underneath the same tree whom she’d later slaughtered. He’d simply brought her close and kissed her. She’d never said if she respected him. Maybe she still believed love and respect were mutual emotions."
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Sansa Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 84





	nervous, sure-footed, furious

**Author's Note:**

> excerpts from a google doc i've had running for about two years now (so started during season 7), dedicated to my darling friend tumblr user poewasright, who has been on this tiny handcrafted boat with me for seven years now

He rides North, along the Kings Road, a hood pulled close around his face, glad of the cold and the excuse it gives for him to wear gloves. There is no disguising that his hand is solid and useless, but without the glint of metal, he could be any sellsword on the unlucky end of a fight– or, at least, he hopes. The rooms he takes at inns along the way are of middling quality, and he is careful to never be ostentatious with the Highgarden gold in his purse. Accents change, slightly and then all at once, and a Southron lord’s voice gains him nothing but dark looks from under heavy brows. So Jaime tries new ways to shape his voice. Deeper, more rolling, the soft edge of a highborn tongue cut rough; this new man in Jaime Lannister’s body does not use his voice much. 

Who would be there to listen, except the snow and the horse and the curved branches above his head? 

And so a fortnight later, shivering, silent, he rides over a crest and sees the stone sprawl of Winterfell before him. It is another half-day’s ride to the gates, where merchant carts and supply wagons are checked and admitted. 

No matter how a man tries to remake himself in the image of what he is not, the time will come when a new voice will not save him. 

The guards, upon hearing greeting– My name is Jaime Lannister, and I am here to speak with Queen Daenerys.– drag Jaime off his horse and into the Great Hall. The Targaryen queen isn’t there, and neither is the bastard who styles himself King.

There is the Lady of Winterfell. 

He is thrown unceremoniously at her feet, and his hand clangs against the stone. It is very cold.

The girl has become a woman, a fire at her back and her men around her, for it is foolish to not notice the way these northern lords encircle their Lady. A direwolf, _the_ direwolf, lounges at her feet. Surprise makes her eyes go wide and soft, lips holding back words she probably does not even know how to say. This pleases him, the surprise. The expression slides from her face as quickly as it appeared, replaced by a preternatural blankness. 

It reminds him of Cersei, when Robert would belch drunkenly at the table and heap abuse, and she would sit there, silent, as if nothing had ever bothered her at all. 

It also reminds him of her brother, the first King in the North. A stupid and dead boy. His sister is neither, to have survived this long. 

“Hello, Ser Jaime.”

“Lady Sansa. I was looking for your brother and your queen.” Sansa makes a low _hmph_ in her throat at that, and he looks up at her again, not sure if he should stand. She is very beautiful, and very cold, and Jaime thinks of a statue he saw once in a sept. The sculptor had claimed to have been visited by the Seven, and carved their true faces. The Maiden’s beauty had struck terror into him, for it was so powerful, and Cersei merely laughed and asked if she was not more beautiful than even The Maiden. She was, but Cersei’s beauty did not inspire terror because it was his own. 

The Seven did not dwell this far North. This was a place for the Old Gods, and the First Men, and this accursed magic that could raise the dead. 

“Rise, Ser Jaime. Queen Daenerys is not here, though I am sure Cersei would be pleased to hear that. Do you have an army hidden somewhere, to lay siege to us? Have you come to treat with us? I would advise against that. Winter is here, and the snows are very deep.” The last sentence mocks him as he stumbles up. He sighs, bowing his head.

“No, my lady. My sister has sent no such army.” _Yet_. “I have come of my own free choice, to serve in the battle to come. Lady Brienne and your brother appealed to me. They do not know I have come.”

“Alone?” Her brow raises, skeptical. It is a very polished skepticism. 

“Alone.” In every way.

Brienne vouches for his intentions, and he is given a small room unlike the ones he stayed in years ago. The tower he had taken Cersei to has fallen completely, he discovers, and he does not like what that could mean for him. 

The sight of Bran Stark, alive but crippled, sends a chill through him. The boy should have died long ago, not become whatever it is the folk gossip about. More magic, more mysteries, the understanding of the world unraveling with every revelation. Bran should have named him, laid bare the act for which the only guilt was that it had not succeeded in the boy’s death. Instead, this Three-Eyed Raven stares through Jaime’s soul and leaves him with an aching jaw. A white wolf stalks the halls behind the Lady of Winterfell, and she often absent mindedly pets the monstrous head that reaches to nearly her shoulder. Arya Stark moves with a catlike grace, and her ability with a sword as she trains with Brienne is not natural. Nothing about this gods-damned North is anymore.

The only natural-seeming thing is Lady Sansa, a constant presence throughout Winterfell. The smallfolk smile at her, take her counsel, give her theirs, and afterwards she slips away into the Godswood, into her rooms, into the crypts, into what he can only assume is silence, to be Sansa again. Her sister follows her, and her brother sequesters himself. Randyll Tarly’s fool older son is there, too, and Jaime tells him that he is the last Tarly, and the man does not weep. 

Though, as Jaime discovers, Samwell is perhaps less of a fool then his kin. Jon Snow had mentioned dragonglass, and here it was in great piles, mined at Dragonstone and now worked in the great keep’s forges. All of this from the advice of a failed maester to maybe turn the tide in the battle to come. Jaime asks if he can go farther North, to the fighting, and Sansa shakes her head, for part of the Wall has fallen and the Dragon Queen and Jon are gathering up what forces they can to bring them closer to Winterfell to outfit them. The snows are too deep to travel alone, especially for a man grown in the southern heat.

Nobody in Winterfell trusts him except for Brienne, and why should they? He does not seek out their trust, only reinforces that he is not there to spy for his sister, only to help in this conflict. Sansa allows him a seat at her table, in a polite, distant way. She is still able to hold a very pretty conversation, and he plays into the verbal game. Sometimes, she summons him to meetings with the lords who head large forces, and they exhaust the possibilities of possibility, of what Winterfell can withstand, of how many they can shelter, or if that will be enough. He warns them of what is coming from the south. It is all so much. 

He tells no one that he dreams of Cersei fucking that Iron Born bastard in her bed, in _their_ bed; maybe her child isn’t even his but that she has been doing more than leading Euron Greyjoy on. When he wakes the next morning, it is with a seething jealousy that carries over into a foul mood. He trains with Brienne and almost howls with rage when he forgets who he is and tries to switch the sword to his right hand. Widow’s Wail drops uselessly to the ground.

“A bad night’s rest, Ser Jaime.” Sansa’s voice is not a question or a mockery, and he looks up to see her on the balcony above the training yard. It is an unfailing politeness that she never just calls him Jaime, though he has suggested that he is less of a Ser now.

“I have had better, my lady.” She is too far up for him to see the nuance of her expression, but she extends an offer for him to walk with her after he is finished. It could not be too much to hope that she may just shove him off a parapet after this farce of a sword practice.

The winds up on the walls cut through his cloak and furs, chapping his nose and cheeks; it is a wonder that Sansa’s face remains smooth, save for a red spot on the tip of her nose. He remarks on it, not unkindly, and she tells him of the mixture of animal fat and herbs that they make to belay the worst effects of the cold. Ghost, as he has learned is the direwolf’s name, trots behind them. It is rather like having a chaperone, albeit a chaperone with sharp teeth.

“I have heard reports from Kings Landing that the Sept was destroyed. Is that true, Ser? News is not always so accurate when it travels long distances.”

“It is.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.” And more of the city besides. The rubble had still not been cleared.

Sansa is silent, and when Jaime looks over he sees it is because she is holding back a smile. 

“Does that please you, my lady?”

“The thought of the lives lost does not please me, but I will not mourn the place itself. Margaery and Loras were kind to me.” Ghost nudges at her hand and she leans to kiss his nose. “Did you know, Ser Jaime, you are one of the truest knights I have known.” A statement, again. She is very good at those.

He snorts. “Lady Sansa, I do believe you are smart enough to not say words like that.”

“Oh, no, Ser, I believe I have witnessed enough of knights to be able to say it. Good and bad.”

And then, suddenly, his foot catches a patch of ice, and his body falls forward so that he catches himself on all fours. Sansa gasps, hand reaching to grab his arm. He waves her away, sitting up into a kneeling position to assess if any damage had been done.

“I am sure the knights in songs do not slide on patches of ice, Lady.”

Sansa steps up to him, so tall that he must crane his head back to see her face. “That is because the knights all lived in summer. You are in winter, now, and there are no songs which are true.”

“So I am often reminded, when my toes grow numb.”

She laughs at that, leaning down to kiss his forehead. It feels like an act of benediction. For what, he cannot tell. “We will commission you better boots. Rise, Ser Jaime Lannister. We will make sure you survive the winter yet.”

Later, he returns to his rooms to find a pot of ointment sitting next to his mirror, delivered by unknown hands. _I will not mourn the place itself._ Jaime thinks of the Mad King, of Cersei, of Sansa laughing as she inspects a merchant’s wares. Sansa calmly handling the issues of her liege lords, to their admiration. Sansa on the wall, snow in her hair, lips on his forehead. _Did you know, Ser Jaime, that you are one of the truest knights I have known._ He frowns, setting the jar of ointment down harder than he means to, and the mirror rattles.

\--

"I want you to marry me, in truth, in the eyes of the North,” she says, eyes and hair reflecting the firelight like some kind of witch from tales. 

Jaime pauses a moment, considering, noticing the nervous twist of her fingers in the low light, before leaning into the shadow and kissing her. 

“Yes,” he says, in the space between her lips and her neck, voice low, “after all, we kingslayers should band together.”

-

She offers him marriage, and he accepts, calling her a kingslayer, for that is what she is, and what he is also. Both faced with kings who would have eaten them, so they killed their hunter, and so were scorned. There is such freedom in being a murderer, Sansa knows; the freedom she felt, finally, as Ramsay’s dogs tore out his throat, his tongue, his cock, leaving her a lady, _the_ lady, of Winterfell. 

One morning Sansa looked across the table at breakfast and saw her Jaime, her Kingslayer, hair golden but shot with silver, and she thinks, _yes, he will do, as he loves me_ . She knew this as he moved into her in the dark, after she had started to expect him, and stopped trying to slit his throat. He had killed for her, and would eat her up not as if they were both young and still wholly of their houses; Jaime would not pluck her like some last ripened apple, as if she were all unblemished skin and fruit. He had already bitten into her, tasted the rot of her core, and feasted. _It is not perfect, but it will nourish me, so it is good_. 

Such would be their marriage, and Sansa is glad of this, the honesty between them. She tells her advisors of her upcoming marriage, alone, and when they balk she tells them, again, that she is marrying; they relent, but amongst themselves they murmur, and make secret plans, as if their Lady did not make secret plans herself for the marriage to come to pass.

  
When the Lady of Winterfell marries for a second time underneath the Weirwood, she is dressed in blue, her hair loose, waiting for her husband in the shade of the branches, the winter sun bright overhead. 

Her husband wears no stitch of his native colors, instead coming to kneel before his bride in grey and black. His hair is worn longer, beard trimmed close and still glistening with oil, false obsidian hand bared to the world.

The gathered company shifts with contained contempt at this pairing, the coldness of a political marriage that they have seen before. The bride places a cloak with a snarling direwolf around her husband’s shoulders, and the audience murmurs at this change in tradition. The groom bares his neck fully to his bride, and takes her hand to stand, after.

If these lords and ladies had looked closer, they would have seen the lion stitched upon the lining by the expectant bride. But they had not, and so they expected this as only a show of Southron fealty to his conquering wife. Their first kiss in bond is chaste, the groom’s whole thumb rubbing across his bride’s arm. A soothing gesture, perhaps.

It is when the dancing begins that the lords and ladies realize that they may have made a mistake in their judgment of the Lady’s choice. 

The North has traditional dances for a wedding feast, for both the couple and the guests. A pity, some smirk, that the dances require the man to lift his partner. They anticipate disaster, and the musicians strike up a merry tune as the couple circles each other in the Great Hall’s cleared space. 

As the music quickens, so does the couple dance closer, hands lifted to press together, the bride swirling in and out from the axis of her husband. This is a dance she has practiced many times since she was a young, giggling girl, but now her face is serious, eyes sparking in the torch light.

Here, the moment of truth, when the fiddles and tambourines crescendo, and the groom picks up his bride as he is supposed to, twirling her around by the waist. The bride squeaks in surprise, hands on his shoulders to support herself. He makes no indication to set her down, grinning up with a look that speaks of a longer conversation between them, and she laughs delightedly. 

When her feet touch the stone floor again, her hand goes to his face, thumb brushing at the corner of his eye, and she kisses him in a way unlike at their wedding. The lords and ladies turn their heads, unable to conflate what they know of this couple and what they now witness. 

But the music continues, and they dance on, inviting their guests to join the celebration. For now it does feel like more a celebration after the Lady of Winterfell’s laughter.

\--

The wolves, the real wolves, return to Winterfell, a howling pack of sharp teeth and shiny eyes, prowling the wolfswood outside the walls. Arya wakes in the middle of the night, slipping into her sister’s room and drawing her silently from under the arm of her husband. Jaime doesn’t stir as Arya hands Sansa a cloak and takes a lamp from the table, for Sansa’s sake. A cat can see perfectly well in the dark.

It isn’t until they are in the hall that Sansa asks where they’re going, and her sister says that she has a gift that she dreamt of. Out a back way, boots breaking through new crust in the snow, to the foreboding snarl of trees ahead. Sansa wonders if this is another game of her sister’s, and begins to feel dread in her stomach, which twists into fear as low growls erupt around them. In the small puddle of lamplight, Arya’s eyes go white just before a monstrous shape trots into view, a wriggling bundle dropped at Sansa’s feet. 

“That one is yours, Sansa.” Arya’s voice is huskier when she comes to, and her sister leans into what Sansa can now tell is a wolf, but not any wolf, a direwolf full grown, and only one–

The bundle unfolds itself and yips, a sound she can barely remember but that strikes deep into her heart. Falling to her knees, Sansa gathers the pup into her arms, looking up at Nymeria. It must be, to yield to her sister like this. The direwolf smells Sansa’s hair, licking gently at her tear-stained cheek, a baptism. Lady would have grown that large. Lady would never have let a man lay his hands on her. 

“Arya, why?”

“I’ve been having wolf dreams again, and Nym’s pup won’t survive with the pack as it is. She needs you, Sansa.” The younger girl kicks at the snow, hand rubbing her wolf’s muzzle. “Winter is here, and the pack must survive. This one is the only of her litter.”

_As I was, for a time. We will understand each other in that way._

-

Jaime wakes in the morning to an empty bed, an innate panic sweeping through as he feels the barren sheets. He dresses hurriedly, to the bare minimum of decency before checking Sansa’s solar. 

There, in the grey morning light, lay piled the Lady of Winterfell and her sister atop one of the lounging couches meant for hosting visitors. A small head on Sansa’s shoulder lifts at the sound of intrusion, and Jaime’s panic distills into a stuttering, ephemeral fear when he meets the pup’s preternatural eyes. 

-

Sansa names the puppy Lyarra, and the runt follows her new mother everywhere, wiggling to her lap at meals and when she takes audiences, tumbling through the muddy courtyards. 

Jaime does not touch his wife for weeks. 

Lyarra regards him from her mother’s lap, intrigued, but never moves towards him. Though he is not accepted by his Northern peers, he still hears their stories; they say that the Starks can become wolves themselves, and Jaime believes it. He believes in more than he used to, now that he has seen what lurks beyond the Wall, and what Bran Stark is. Certainly not the child he tried to kill, once.

In a world of dragons, it is not hard to believe his wife could become a wolf. This does not mean the fact cannot strike him in a place where no blithe jape could soothe. He dreams of hot wolf-breath on his cheek, teeth on his right wrist. No, that’s not right. A scythe in firelight, swinging through the air, the whistle of blade turned to howls.

Jaime does not touch his wife for weeks, and sleeps terribly.

Sansa grows shorter-tempered, imperceptibly. The movement of her skirts, the rap of her fingers on wood- it all grows sharper, as if to get his attention, as if to draw it to her and the pup. _Look_ , the lady demands in her silent way, _look and come back to me._ He cannot go back when he is ever reminded of his captivity. 

One morning as they train, Brienne says that Sansa threw a broken quill across the room yesterday, would he know anything about this change in temper? 

Jaime responds by growing more vicious with his sword. Brienne frowns, knocks it to the ground with her own, and tells him to stop being such a prideful ass. 

“I don’t know what has soured, but the Lady of Winterfell does not need grief caused by you.”

He grinds his teeth. Grief caused by him, when what of the grief her family has caused him? That fool of an older brother, still a boy (but was Jaime not the same age himself when branded Kingslayer?), playing at war and using him for bargaining fodder, like some blasted fat cow at market. Grief caused by him, when she has brought the wolf into their bed? 

Forgiving her for this- for what?- seems too much to bear. 

But.

Jaime does not touch his wife for weeks, and in her absence he cannot tell where his bitterness ends and his fear begins. It is all of one emotion, roiling. It tires him. 

Part of him thinks to murder the puppy, for she is still a small thing and could be easily bested by his bulk, but he knows that Sansa would see through him and he would be the next dead thing in Winterfell.

Another part of him knows what he must do.

The main courtyard is covered in a fresh layer of snow when he goes to cross it after training, Sansa overseeing the unloading of supply carts with Lyarra in her arms. The puppy is enjoying her newfound height over her mother’s shoulder, and Jaime approaches slowly, hand reaching out tentatively. 

Sansa grows more still, as if she knows it is him, but that would be impossible, wouldn’t it? Lyarra reaches out her nose to gleefully meet his fingers, the end twitching with the approach of new scents. With the final step, his shaking hand is bumped by an inquisitive wolf pup, his fear not entirely dissipating, but beginning the process.

As Lyarra nuzzles at his hand, his wife turns her head, barely, so that he can see the shape of her cheek. 

“Welcome back.” These are the first words she has said to him in a month.

“I’ve missed you,” and though he wishes to call her _love_ , a familiar endearment, the word feels false in this moment; when she turns to him, he knows it is.

“I’ll see you in our rooms tonight.” With that, his Lady leaves him standing in the courtyard. 

That night, he goes to where she sits sewing in their room, falling to his knees. It is as much a show of piety as Jaime Lannister will ever do. She looks down on him and says nothing.

“I have acted out of fear.”

“So you have.”

He rests his head on her lap. The anticipation of her fingers in his hair finds no release. 

“I have missed you.”

“So you said, earlier.”

He turns her head, kisses her knee. “Sansa.”

“Jaime-” Suddenly, her hand in his hair, tilting his face sharply up so he can meet her eyes. “I know this is about Lyarra. I know what you think she means to you. But she is my home, and I have been traded by men and raped by men and threatened by men for my home. I will not have my husband fear me for this.” She pauses, mouth tightening. “If I wanted you to be afraid and away from me, I would give you good reason. That, I promise.”

“I have been a fool, and I should seek to not doubt you. Fear has no place here.”

“Fear is for the winter, Jaime. Now come to bed.”

His wife, made of winter. He obeys.

\--

Jaime joins a hunting party that leaves Winterfell in a crashing of horses’ hooves and snow and howling dogs. Lyarra joins them, her shoulder almost reaching that of his horse’s, the animal eying her warily despite months of training. The direwolf loped ahead.

There had been a snowstorm two days before, the fresh snow slowing the horses down as they broke new tracks. Hunting wasn’t necessary, really, given the careful cultivation of livestock inside Winterfell’s walls, but the hounds grew restless, and the people too, so Sansa approved of groups leaving the castle. This was the first time Jaime had joined them, his mount taut as a bowstring beneath, freezing air stinging his face above. He would never be a northerner, but he was married to their queen, and so the other riders did not murder him in quiet glades for long ago transgressions. 

Maybe they should, so he wouldn’t feel this fucking cold on the exposed skin of his cheek. He remembers in Dorne, once, when he would have given anything but Cersei’s cunt to shed all of his clothes, but here he can’t get enough furs, enough tunics and thick wool shirts. His face would be better served warmed between his wife’s thighs, where it was always a damp heated summer. 

His northern summer, he should be calling Sansa when he murmurs in her ear at the table or brings her close to dance, when he wants to make her flush in front of their court. Her court. An odd detachment, that. He was married to their queen but they regarded him like a rabid beast on a chain. 

_-They don’t have to like you, husband, but they respect you enough._

_-Ah, but what of you?_

_-We married under the eyes of the Weirwood, and I love you._

He did not to say she had married a man underneath the same tree whom she’d later slaughtered. He’d simply brought her close and kissed her. She’d never said if she respected him. Maybe she still believed love and respect were mutual emotions. 

But no, she sent him out with Winterfell men and women, and no apparent worry for his safety. 

Lyarra appears at Jaime’s elbow, eyes bright and grinning, as close as a wolf can do, the scent of blood in her nose. For all she curled at the foot of the bed and submitted to a human hand, the direwolf is a wild animal. Maybe Sansa’s folk should concern themselves more with their safety from wolf teeth then his own blunt paws. 

Jaime reaches out, pats the wolf’s head, his horse attempting to canter sideways before being checked with his rein, and Lyarra bounds forward, snapping her jaws around a stag’s throat. 

_Ironic,_ he thinks, before dismounting to finish the kill, a dagger in hand. He keeps this dagger with him everywhere, even in sleep, a twin in Sansa’s possession. 

A wedding gift, and an act of love.


End file.
